Every July, I write the Horror Genre Preview for Library Journal. For this article (due the first week of May) I have to take a look at all of the horror titles coming out August to January and group them into larger trends.
I want to include all the books, but even though I am giving you the online link, this is an article that goes in the print magazine so there is a hard word limit.
This year it is titled, "The Art of Tales That Terrify."
Click here to read the entire preview at LJ or see below for the full text of my draft.
I made a spreadsheet of every title I considered for this article and divided it into 2 tabs. The first the titles that made the cut and the second everything else. You can use it as a buying list. It has ISBNs, publishers, and release dates. Click here to access.
The article is always paired with an interview and this year I got to take to the editors of one of the best anthologies of 2026, Never Whistle at Night II: Back for Blood, Shane Hawk and Ted Van Alst. You can read that here.
There are a few other Horror lists in this issue as well. Melissa DeWild, my editor and the author of the awesome "Display Shelf" column for LJ made this great "Summerween" display list. And the Horror Sure Bets list (part of LJ's 150th Anniversary) is also live. When you click through you can also access every title that was submitted for Horror Sure Bets.
What does all this mean? The July Library Journal is chock full of Horror! Now is the perfect time to get all of your orders in. You can also use Emily' Hughes wonderful list of all of the 2026 horror titles to make sure you didn't miss things that came out before August as well.
Most of this content is free for the month but I am posting the draft of my article below so that it is accesible as a backlist option. I have an archive of all of these genre previews and every interview I have done for LJ here on the horror blog.
Stock up for Spooky Season while there is still time to get the books in, processed, and on the shelves in time for the Horror rush. And here's the draft article (below).
2026 Horror Genre Preview
Library Journal
by Becky Spratford
Draft
The upcoming months of Horror titles confirm that the genre is not only continuing its meteoric rise in mainstream popularity but also, precisely because of that popularity, authors are able to shine their dark spotlight into new places. While last year saw a focus on epic stories, novels that made overt nods to the past, and new spins on established tropes, this year the leading trends are all about how Horror is spreading its tendrils across genres and expanding its reach within its own terrifying boundaries. From the genre blending popularity of Horror with Romance and Science Fiction, to noticeable evolutions in Folk and Art Horror, the emergence of Motherhood and Sea Soaked Horror as major subgenres, and more, Horror is coming for readers where they live, hitting them with scenarios that are close to home, and focusing on fears that the genre’s readers, new and old, can feel in their bones.
Swoon and Screams
Horroromance is not a marketing gimmick, this season it has truly come of age, emerging as a subgenre with options for a wide variety of readers, distinct from the paranormal romances of the past. As an editor at Mira, Emma Cole has been on the forefront of this change noting, “It’s been great to see writers of both romance and horror so willing to not only dip their toes in, but dive headfirst into horroromance without compromising either genre. These messy, complicated explorations of what it means to believe in love under the worst possible circumstances (and sometimes with the worst possible partner) are high-stakes, visceral, emotional stories that feel perfect for the current moment.” These are books that are equal parts horror and romance, offering the very best of both to their readers, bringing new fans to both genres. Cole explores this very topic herself in Love Never Dies: Romance in Horror Movies (Beacon). Leading this impressive list of Horroromance novels is Clay McLeod Chapman with Devil Inside (Mira) featuring an existentially terrifying yet oddly sweet (and spicy) romance between a man and a demon. A river monster who has lived under the streets of Boston for hundreds of years falls for a handsome academic in Jenny Will Eat You Now (Gallery) by Gillian Daniels. YA author Taylor Grothe’s adult debut, Lethal Kiss (Nightfire) is a blood-soaked sapphic romance, as grotesque as it is beautiful. S. M. Hallow’s first novel, The Halls of the Dead (Harper Voyager), a queer, gothic horror romance set in a necromancy-tinged London, adds even more appeal based entry points for new readers. Those looking for Rom-Com options within Horroromance can try, 10 Things I Hate About Zombies by Hazel Graves (Avon) following a smoothie shop owner and mushroom farmer, who meet, combine their jobs, fall love, but also, might have caused a zombie outbreak as a result. With even bestselling author Lauren Willig getting in on the action with What Happens at Nightfall (HarperCollins), a Gothic romantic adventure set in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, expect more readers to be clamoring for books that deliver on the swoons and the screams.
SciFi Horror Comes Down to Earth
Space Horror has become a reliable Horror subgenre in the past few years; however, this season there seems to be a clear shift within SF Horror as the stories are making their free fall from space, anchoring their characters here on earth, featuring a fear that is more immediate, and as a result, often more terrifying. Much like Horrorromance, this trend is being applied across upcoming titles, so that the trend also offers a wide range of reading experiences. Alma Katsu looks at the horror of social media in Incarnate (Putnam), based on her years of experience as a technology futurist, helping agencies like the CIA and NSA understand the potential impact of emerging technologies. “Deep fakes? I first wrote about them in 2012. Avatars as social media influencers? 2017. No one foresaw where these technologies would eventually go. They've given birth to influencer culture, changing how we present ourselves to the world and how we think of ourselves. As recent court rulings have shown, it’s wreaked havoc on our mental health. It’s changed what it means to be human—and it’s doing it in the blink of an eye, in normal evolutionary terms, and it’s a tragedy of our own making. If that's not a horror story, I don't know what is." Wither (Bloomsbury) by Daniel Warner, a propulsive, darkly funny novel about technology, privacy, and humanity’s growing reliance on algorithms, is another great example here. In She Isn’t Herself Tonight (Saga) by Hailey Piper a young woman waits for an alien abduction, it would be the third in her lifetime, but they are late, and this turns her life on earth upside down. But this trend digs even deeper as horror novelists are also exploring popular earth based SF tropes such as time loops in Kiss Slay Replay (Berkley) by Rachel Harrison, time-travel in Night of the Mallrats (HarperCollins) by Nicolina Torres, and the SF nerds themself, in the intense and original, tabletop role-playing framed The Ship of Death (Avon) by Kyle Winkler. It seems like SF Horror writers don’t need to only look to the stars for scares, right now, there is plenty of science fiction terror to go around here on earth.
Folk Horror Expands Its Terrifying Reach
Folk horror has been around forever, literally, because this genre focuses on the beliefs and actions of peoples, recounting the horrific results, including a reawakening of their supernatural monsters, when naive outsiders come in contact with them. However, most mainstream folk horror, like most popular fiction, tended to be centered around a white, western experience. When Stephen Graham Jones released The Only Good Indians in 2020, all that changed, as Jones’ long time editor, now VP, Associate Publisher and Editorial Director of Saga Press, Joe Monti recounts, “There was a sense of reclaiming and reframing the expectations of what was commercial in the genre when [Jones] explored indigenous revenge through the folk horror of Elk Head Woman. He was pointing to the path for horror’s resurgence, the way it could talk about race, class, and culture with an immediacy that other genres of literature could not.” Now 6 years later, it is clear that Jones’ helped get us to this moment where we are experiencing a Horror Renaissance, and he is back with a sequel to that seminal novel, one of this Fall’s most anticipated, Off the Reservation (Saga), but he is far from alone in offering readers the chance to feel new fears by exploring race, class, and culture through Folk Horror, and they are being introduced to a whole new crop of monsters along the way. Jennifer McMahon’s dual timeline Stay Buried (Gallery) set in an isolated Vermont town, besieged by “the knackerman,” features a lesbian narrator trying to live her authentic life in 1919, while in As Snow Gathers (Sourcebooks) by Mere Joyce, a gay couple must fight for their lives, their love, and a way out of the woods where the Fanteur dwell. Bitter Karella returns with his second novel, Quaint Folk (Run for It) a darkly humorous but chillingly realistic queer folk horror novel set in an idyllic island community hiding a rotten secret just out of view, and Leopoldo Goût takes readers to Mexico City and introduces them to “The Flayed One” in Rooted (Nightfire). Cassandra Khaw uses readers' familiarity with the well known western folk horror monster, the Grim Reaper, bringing a black hound of Death twist in Find Me Where It Ends (Nightfire). Finally it is interesting to note that there are two upcoming, prominent anthologies both of which explore the horror of marginalized peoples’ folklore, Back for Blood: Never Whistle at Night Part II, ed. Shane Hawk & Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. (Vintage) featuring Indigenous authors and Something Followed Us Home: Tales of Latiné Horror, edited by Cynthia Pelayo (Atria/Primero Sueño Press) featuring stories by some of the most acclaimed Latiné voices from across all of literature.
Art Horror on Visceral Display
“To create a work of beauty is, in some ways, to live a life of horror,” notes Michael Homler, Senior Editor at St. Martin’s, publisher of one of this season’s standout Horror novels, The Minimalist (St Martin’s) by Kaliee Pederson. He continues, “We love to watch movies, read books, look at paintings, listen to music etc. But we often don't stop to think about the origins of these things, and the answers there can be horrifying. I think what Kailee does so well in The Minimalist is she takes a world she knows so well personally, taps into the fears, the insecurities, the over-knowledge, and all this stuff that is sometimes taken for granted, and builds a world out of it to explore the ultimate horror involved in creating a piece of music.” Pederson explores music but in the coming months, horror is coming for just about every type of art. Leading the pack alongside Pederson is Josh Malerman with an intense, psychological tale of a woman trapped in a painting, Pictures of You (Del Rey). Other titles of note and the art they mine for terror include rising star Saratoga Schaefer with ceramics in A Thousand Monstrous Forms (Crooked Lane), De Elizabeth and theater in She Haunts Me Still (Dutton), ballerinas in The Finalist (Grand Central) by Faith Gladwin, even an enormous, but sinister, painted globe in Naomi Kelsey’s 1597 set Gothic, The Darkening Globe (HarperNorth)
The Macabre and The Maternal
This is not your mother’s maternal horror. Going back to Mommy Dearest or Rosemary’s Baby, terrifying mothers and demonic children are tropes that have been probed for decades, but with more women writing horror than ever before, it should come as no surprise that the breadth of horror surrounding all things maternal has grown to include more experiences as well. One of the best examples this season is Milkteeth (St. Martin’s) by Caitlin Starling which follows a vampire broodmother, a story she conceived while breastfeeding and weaning her own child, Notes Starling, “Breastfeeding is complicated, even when it goes well; you're actively and visibly using your own body as a machine to convert food into sustenance for another living creature, and then when it's over, it's over. The transitory nature of the change is as destabilizing as the change itself, and all that destabilization and complexity made it fertile ground to marry it to vampirism.” Other titles pushing motherhood in unique and more macabre direction include Sarah Langan’s Trad Wife (Atria) in which an investigative journalist uncovers the horrific truth behind the trade wife queen of social media, The Sleeping Sisters (Mulholland) by Jennifer Givhan set along the Rio Grande, a feral hymn to motherhood and the monstrous bargains women make to protect the ones they love across generations, Brenda LaTorre’s Bruja’s Nest (Creature) following a mother who will do anything to protect her child, Carrying (Putnam) by Samantha Josephs, an exciting debut, darkly funny, and harrowing in which a trans woman becomes (impossibly) pregnant, and Don’t Leave Her Alone (Putnam) by Desirée de Fez, translated by Lizzie Davis, suburban horror with a Nightbitch feel, set in Barcelona, following three mothers who are linked by the tentacles that live inside them.
Sea Soaked Horror
Using the common human fear of the deep dark oceans in a horror story is not a trend, it has long been a staple of the genre from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to Lovecraft and beyond, but sea soaked horror is clearly having its moment in the spotlight, dousing readers with fresh takes on dripping wet terror. Leading this school of fishy tales is Kim Bo-Young’s A Plagued Sea (Nightfire), both a perfectly rendered Lovecraftian tale of sea monsters and a contemplation of the horrific ways humans treat the victims of disease. Bestselling fantasy author Hannah F. Whitten takes a deep dive into the ancient sea creature that has given an uber rich family generations of success and the young woman who may finally be able to stop the cycle of horror in Reliquary (Run For It). Other notable titles include, Atomic Coffin (Saga) by Benedict Anning, a SF-Horror-Spy Thriller set in a secret, underwater USSR base, William Friend’s debut And the Sea Gave Up the Dead (Poisoned Pen Press), a tale where grief, mystery, and sea based folk horror work together to create a haunting read, Netherwood (Titan) by Jake Arnott following a couple as they hope to find peace and redemption in a quaint English seaside town with a dark history, and Beyond the Graves Waits Mist and Sea (Kensington) by Kathleen Kaufman which takes a marine biologist to an island 20 miles off the coast of Boston to study an undiscovered species of octopus. Finally, when bestselling Horror parodist Jason Pargin enters the fray with his off the wall but thought provoking humor, that is a clear sign that a trend has broken through into the mainstream, and this season his There Are No Giant Crabs in This Novel: A Novel of Giant Crabs (St. Martin’s) is a perfect example of that.
Debuts
With Horror experiencing a vibrant renaissance, there are many exciting debuts coming to shelves this season, some of which have already been noted above. Other exciting and original books include Deena Helm’s Our Cut of Salt (Nightfire), a haunted house novel told from a Palestinian perspective, Indigenous horror from Mathilda Zeller’s It Looks Like You in the Dark (Nightfire), The immersive Welsh folk horror of Liam Higginson’s The Hill in the Dark Grove (Hogarth), Melissa Anderson Sweazy’s The Sisters of Crimson House (Sourcebooks), a southern Gothic, a haunted house, and a family of psychics. The surreal broadcasts of Jane Schoenbrun’s Public Access Afterworld (Hogarth) will captivate readers, Luke Larkin’s Weird Western The Unheld (Hyperion) will appeal to fans of Lonesome Women by Victor LaValle, Isabela Livino’s An Immaculate Deception (Penguin) set in 1870’s Brazil expands the Gothic’s reach, while C.N. Vair pits a witch against the Devil in The Devil Knows Her Name (Berkley) and Nicholas Russell sets his terrifying cosmic horror in the American desert in Observer (Ecco). Finally don’t miss Mothersucker (VIntage) from Korean author Kim Bohyun, translated by Archana Madhavan, following a vampire who targets men who have harmed harmed women, across time, and Penitents (Ghoulish) by Madeline Blondeau, a trans tribute to New French Extreme Cinema and 1970’s greenhouse horror set in the Pacific Northwest.
Can’t Miss Authors
Even with all of the exciting books covered here already, there are still some titles that you can not miss. In Other Worlds Than These (Scribner), Stephen King completes the Talisman Trilogy which he began with the late Peter Straub, while one of King’s favorite newer authors, Keith Rosson presents Crone (Random House) a haunting story of a father searching for his long missing daughter. Tananarive Due delves deep into the California woods with a monster tale of generational rage and Old Hollywood in Mazywood (Saga), while Chuck Wendig looks into the demonic secrets behind one of the world’s most influential families in The Calamities (Del Rey). USA Today bestselling author, Eric LaRocca continues his Burnt Sparrow trilogy with book 2, We Turn Gruesome At Night (Titan), and two must-buy authors whose works always skirt around the edges of Horror are being marketed, loudly and proudly, with the H word this time around, The Unknown (Dutton) by Riley Sager, one hundred years ago, five women disappeared from a remote island in Vermont, and now it is happening again, and Dive Bar at the End of the Road (St. Martin’s) by Kelley Armstrong, a series of accidents trap a group of strangers in a bar. Two bestselling YA horror novelists are also making the jump to the Adult ranks this season. Adam Cesare’s Mercy House (Del Rey) set in a horror-fueled retirement home, and Gretchen McNeil’s religiously tinged, horror mystery, set in an isolated town, home to an ancient evil, We Are for the Dark (Astra House). Long-awaited returns by authors who haven’t published a horror novel in far too long are among the season’s most anticipated titles as well. Elizabeth Kostova sets her sights on Dracula’s haunting legacy once again in Mystery Play (Ballantine), and author of the cult hit The Library at Mount Char, Scott Hawkins, finally returns, after more than a decade with Blacktail (Crown) following a wolf on an epic journey of revenge. It is also important to note critically the acclaimed debut novelists who are returning with must read second novels this season including Michael Wehunt’s Nightjars (St. Martin’s), Tanya Pell’s Barbie Just Won’t Die! (Gallery) and Donyae Cole’s The Sunken, The Adored (Amistad). Finally, Ellen Datlow has a Halloween present for every reader with All Hallow’s Eve (Titan), a chilling horror anthology of 19 original short stories exploring the histories and traditions of the spookiest time of year including authors already mentioned here like Josh Malerman, Stephen Graham Jones, Alma Katsu, and Clay McLeod Chapman.
